Measurement tasks in a coal power plant

Reduce energy and optimize energy production with far distributed measurement locations in a coal power plant

Challenge

A coal power plant needs to detect the energy loss occurring in different areas of the power plant in order to minimize the energy loss and optimize the energy production process. Therefore, various parameters like temperature, pressure, etc. have to be monitored at different locations of the plant, for example in switch cabinets. The test points are located in far distributed locations of the plant. The check needs to be done on a weekly basis. The data has to be acquired in real time and needs to be sent to a laptop, where it is processed and evaluated.

Solution

For this task, the real time open PAC system MSX-Box in combination with the APCI-3200 (for temperature measurement), the APCI-3300 (for pressure measurement) and the APCI-3010 (for measurement of analog values) has been chosen. The WLAN interface card enables the system to send the acquired data to the remote laptop on a regular basis and the DatabaseConnect software helps to visualize the data. Since it is a compact and portable system, it can be easily moved and used at different locations of the power plant. This helps in keeping the costs lower.